DIY Instax Wallpaper

I have always wanted a wall in my home that was completely filled with photos! A couple weeks ago I got it stuck in my brain that this wall in our studio was the perfect spot. There were a couple challenges, though: 1. The wall is HUGE. 2. I don't have that many instant photos or film. 3. Even if I did buy enough film to fill the whole wall it would cost thousands of dollars and probably take months (or years?) to take enough photos.

So, I came up with a solution. We "wallpapered" this wall with color copies. The cons: They are not real photos, and they do repeat. The pros: It was done in a couple days, and I can now (slowly) cover the repeats with real photos over the next few years. One more pro: We're in love with it! The photo wall makes our studio room a happier place to work.

Here's how we did it:My brother helped me design 11×17 inch images with 9 Instax wide sized photos per sheet. We then created 4 different sheets with different photos. You could always do more if you wanted to reduce repeat photos! We measured the wall and ordered about 130 sheets on 80 lb card stock. We found an inexpensive local printer that did them for around $1 per sheet, so the entire wall only cost about $130! We got the sheets printed and trimmed. Next, we adhered them to the wall. We started with just sturdy double sided tape strips. This didn't work for our wall, so we started using a staple gun. Obviously, someday we will have a lot of staples to pull, but I am ok with that. I plan to keep this wall up for a couple years, so It was worth it to me. If you have satin paint you may not need a staple gun. I made an instagram collage in our last home using only masking tape. It was up for more than 6 months with pretty minimal curling.

So, we adhered and stapled the sheets to the wall. We had to cut some to fill in the leftover space around the edges of the wall at the end. This took an entire afternoon with Katie and Kinsey cutting and stapling. Not bad considering the size of this wall!

Note: We created the wallpaper to match the exact size of Fujifilm INSTAX Wide photos. We chose this instead of polaroid because the film is fairly inexpensive and accessible. It's our favorite instant camera.Now that it is fully installed I will be covering some of the repeat photos with real Instax photos. I love that I can do this over time and that I don't have to wait until I collect a thousand photos to create the wall! It's so much less pressure. 🙂Ta-Da! Here's a photo of the finished product! I am super thrilled with the outcome. It has so much personality. I hope that this tutorial encourages some of you to try a photo statement wall. I am completely pleased with the quality, the price and the time it took us to install the wallpaper. It was a fun project and something we will enjoy for a long time. Have any of you created a photo wall? Is this something you would try?

i think it’s a fun idea for a studio where creativity is happening, but it would probably be a bit overwhelming in a different part of the house. it looks very vibrant and it gives off a feeling of high energy…kinda like the color orange or red. and the turquoise sofa compliments it quite well. neat idea. :0http://designthrift.blogspot.com

SOOO brilliant!! I have been seeing your peaks of this wall and was so amazed you had that many pictures…now that I know there are some duplicates I feel like this is something I could recreate too! Love love love it. <3

That looks awesome! I wonder if you could set something up with a large sheet of images as an engineer print and then tack some color photos over it. The B&W vs. color as well as the image quality difference might be really cool.

We have a partial instax wall in our house. I love it. The wide is my favorite as well. Wish they had more accessories for it! Also, I recently covered my flash with some white and yellow checkered washi tape which has made it possible for me to take photos inside without a super harsh flash. Now I am going through film twice as fast…

WOW! That is an impressive wall.
I had done something similar with all of my photos from middle and high school in my bedroom at my parent’s house. We had the ugliest wallpaper in the room I shared with my little sister. The best idea was to just cover it up. All my friends were jealous because their parents would never let them do something like that.

This is so amazing! I used to cover my walls with pictures I’d taken when I was younger, just bluetacking them to the walls but this is so much better, partly I think because of the white border it keeps it looking bright and light, a really fun wallhttp://ahandfulofhope.blogspot.co.uk/

I love this! Such a great idea. i have part of my wall covered in a wallpaper that shows the outline of photo frames; I used the wallpaper to stick real pictures on in the frames: it looks really playful and fun. But I love your wall too! Maybe something for a next project 😉

This is gorgeous! I’ve been ogling this on Instagram for days now. Haha. I actually like the way the pattern gently repeats, I find it makes my eyes move on down the wall. We are (potentially) moving soon, but once I hear one way or the other, I think I need to find an unsuspecting wall I can do this on. I might try to come up with some grey/brown/blue schemed photos that would fit into our bedroom colors really well.

I love this so much! Would you ever blog about scanning instax/polaroids? I love the white border and the drop shadows. Mine never turn out like that when I scan. Also I LOVE the photo of the blurry city lights! Would love to know how you get good blur with the instax.

I saw this in the background of another picture you posted and am so glad you posted a how to!! I just kept thinking–It will take me forever to take that many pictures and go broke at the same time:) Thank you!!

I was thinking of doing a photo-collage heart above my desk. This technique has inspired me to do it in a more cost-efficient fashion. Seriously, you guys are BRILLIANT. [As is that camera. I haven’t seen a ‘wide’ version before, so I’ve put this on my wish list 😉 ]

This was such a great idea! Once I tried to do a photo wall with all of these old vintage photos I found of my family, but I used ribbon and they didn’t stay up very well. Maybe I’ll try a staple gun! The wall, like everything you and your team does, looks beautiful! have a good night!

This is a great idea. I was thinking of instagram but the constant shape of the instax works really well in this form. It has inspired me to start using it more often. My wish is to be able to afford more Impossible film for my old 600

This looks absolutely amazing! I had a photo wall when I lived on campus at Uni, it took so long to get all of the pictures on the wall and just as long to take them all down again! I love the idea of printing them on to tiles instead – such a good idea. Can’t wait to try it in my new home!

i was just trying to figure out how we could do something like this in our preschool classroom. we’ve set up a “photo booth” area in our room with a back drop and a camera on a tripod for the kids to take pictures of one another. we’re hoping to put together a wall of 100 pictures for the 100th day of school coming up soon. we just need a really amazing title…

This is the perfect inspiration, and it’s certain to be something that lives in our room for a long time. thank you!

This is truly beautiful and inspiring!! I love photos, too often are they hidden away in a drawer and not looked at. It’s lovely that you can just gaze at them whenever it takes your fancy! Or that they might catch your eye when otherwise they wouldn’t have 🙂 x

It looks brilliant, I had such an idea with a bookcase with glass walls. I had the same problem of how to glue/tape/fix this to the wall. I found a gluespray of 3M you can spray it to the paper and you can perfect glue it to the wall, but the most brilliant about it is that you can remove it later without any gluerests. Like a memo. Maybe this spray can work for you as well.
Kind regards from the Netherlands, Nicolle

Love the design. I actually prefer with repeats. Just as an FYI– custom wallpaper is not that much more expensive and a lot more durable. I can so easily see a curious child tearing down some of the lower sheets.

Oh my gosh, this is sooooo awesome! I love this, I am totally going to do this on one of my walls in my new place! I’m also going to feature this on my Links to Love post for today, cause I just love this so much! So creative! 🙂

I too have the instax 210 camera and I was instantly inspires by this. I had some pictures just lying around so I decided to downsize this and use my pictures to cover an area on my wall between windows. I used double stick tape to secure them. I still need a lot more pictures but it’s coming along! Looks great!

Oh my gosh, it looks incredible! Such a statement! I’d love to do this, though I feel impatience would get the better of me and I’d have a strop for a bit haha. Definitely looks worth the time and effort though!

This is so amazing! I just got engaged and we’re not sure where we’ll be living once we get married, but I’m having so much fun getting inspired and collecting ideas for our future home. And this is definitely happening. I’m planning to have Instax cameras and a photobooth at our wedding so we’ll have tons of pictures from that. Omg I just got so excited!

Looks awesome!! I’d always wanted to do the same and it finally hit me one that that’s what my shoebox full of postcards had been waiting for! I used painter’s taped & did two walls in the downstairs bathroom. Guests love it.

I had a photo wall in my dorm freshman year of college – in 2001, when I still had boxes of extra print photos! I started out with a small photo collage using that blue sticky gunk, and then just kept going and ended up with a whole wall full of pics! This is like the grown up version – I love it!

This looks beautiful! Didn’t even realise they were duplicate photo’s! I have a big wall at home filled whit photographs, but they’re both portrait and landscape and overlapping…This looks so great all uniform and framed in white!
xoxo Amie @ Spoonful of Vintage

This is FAB!! i’m in the progress of decorating my salon and have always wanted to cover my partition wall, but never have because though it would coast me alot. So THANKS for the tips!!!
and your wall looks amazing

I’m impressed!!!! You are genious! I’m from Italy, a hamlet on the lake. In Italy sometimes people say that British have no imagination, because of the rain, because of the fog … I now have a website to recommend! Congratulations you are wonderful!
Thank you!

I can’t remember if I commented on this one or not, but O-M-G do I love this wall! The solution of getting a simpler version up NOW that you can expand on over time is brilliant. And to be honest, I really like the repeats of the photos. What a great statement wall!

Elsie I covered a wall in my daughter’s room with scrapbook paper. I was having a tough time getting adhesives to keep the paper on the wall. I ended up using wallpaper paste and I love the way that it turned out!
Here’s a link:http://triciacanonico.com/2012/01/alices-room/

I absolutely love it! I have been collecting pictures & quotes for a while to do a similar thing in my hallway. I have a small house so it needs to be sufficiently out of the way to not overwhelm my small rooms. And I need to marshal the courage to begin! What I love about yours is the uniformity of size – that is something I had not considered doing. The quick fix wallpaper option is clever. Hhmmm – maybe a rethink for me? Secondly, I love love love your blue couch! Another thing I refuse to buy until I find the one I love. Sadly, each time I see the next near perfect piece, someone already owns it. Yours has given me another style to add to my wish list. If the rest of your site is this good, you have a new fan.